So it seems that every time I say I am going to update this blog something else happens and the weekends have been crazy. I hope everyone is fabulous! So, a lot has been going on.

Work is still fabulous. We have our volunteer appreciation party coming up this weekend. This should be fun! I had a little bit of an emotional breakdown about 2 weeks ago. I was sitting at the intake desk at the pantry on a Tuesday night and I was done checking our guests (a much nicer word that client) in and I was watching volunteers interact w/ the guests and just soaking up every thing about that moment in the pantry and I got really emotional and realized that I would have to leave this place. I am falling in love with this place and I am going to have to leave it in 5 months. It was a tough realization for me. I know that this experience has been amazing and I have learned and grown so much and that is part of what this year is about but it is really hard. In my last blog I mentioned about the PROXY forms for the GCFD that we would have to start doing for Home Delivery. Well on both of the delivery dates in Feb we did them. On the 1oth things went really smoothly. All of the volunteers accepted the change well and were able to get the forms back to me before I left the pantry on that same day. This past delivery was a different story for one of the volunteers. She almost made me cry. She was just telling me how ridiculous and inconvenient this was and that she was not going to bring it back but instead fax it. She made this huge deal and you can’t fax these papers b/c they are official government paperwork so I was trying to explain all of this to her but she would talk over me and was not hearing anything I was saying. It was really frustrating. I was annoyed and I still haven’t seen the papers that she was supposed to return. This was my first encounter like this with a volunteer. I talked to Gary, Carrie and Greg about it and they said to direct her to them or to just fire her. Tikes, I don’t know if I could do that! I mean, how do you fire a volunteer? They are donating their time to you, I don’t know. It is a tough situation and I haven’t had to talk to her since so we’ll see what happens. Other than that little hiccup things have been great.

Mary Beth, our area director was in town this week for our area visit. She met with Gary and Carrie. Gary is the exec director of the Pantry and Carrie is my supervisor. We had a 1-1 with each other on Tues morning and had a fabulous breakfast date! We had a nice chat, mostly about community and work. We talked about the struggles in community, most of which I have talked about more specifically in previous blogs. It was really good though. I feel that because she has been where I am before that she relates and understands way more that just venting to someone else. I love talking to any one else about it too but there is that deeper level of understanding from Mary Beth. Anyway she says that we are at a healthy place in our community. We had a great talk last night at our community night which was facilitated by Mary Beth. We answered a few questions that focused on where we were personally in community and then about where our community stands as a whole in our opinion. It brought about great discussion. We talked a lot about conflict and different approaches and ways to address conflict and what we were comfortable with. We talked about ways in which we will and can be more pro active. About people feeling like they can’t be themselves b/c they feel judged or are holding grudges for the very beginning and are not allowing themselves to fully be present to community b/c of this. I think we all learned a lot about each other last night.
We have all decided that we do not “do stuff” together enough. Meaning that we don’t get out of our lame apartment and do things so this weekend we are going to go to Loyola and shoot hoops for a while and then next Wed we are going to go to a coffee shop and Dave is going to teach us a card game or something. It should be good, I just hope that things don’t feel forced and uncomfortable, that is the biggest fear I have. It is what we make it though and we all want this community to work and we all care about each other and so I just have to have faith knowing that we all want the same thing that it will be what we want it to be.

I was reading online yesterday about the Archdiocese of San Diego declaring bankruptcy. I feel so disconnected from everything; I don’t even know what is going on back home. I am curious to read more about it though. It seems sketchy but I don’t really know much about what is going on. We do get the Chicago Tribune every day and I love to have time to read the newspaper. There have been such sad stories lately. I read one the other day about a teenage boy. I think he was 12-13 who was beaten to death on the North Side (where I live) in a gang related violent attack. There have been a number of articles throughout the time I have been here about teenagers killed in car accidents. It is so so sad that so many, I mean hundreds of teens have been killed in car wrecks and it is not so much alcohol and drug related as it is speeding. I mean it doesn’t make sense that friends of the victims see what happens and that their friends get killed but it doesn’t stop them from doing the same thing. It just doesn’t make sense. A lot of things don’t make sense. Lately Stacey and I have been talking a lot about body image. We see posters everywhere for that Model show and the pictures of the women on them are just disgusting. They are beautiful women but they are just skin and bones. What happened in society that made this ok or that made younger girls think that this is the way one must look? Society has evolved into this monster that puts so much pressure on who we are to everyone else and has set this standard of who we are supposed to be and look alike and if we don’t meet it then we are some sort of failure or are not accepted in society at all. How did it get to be like this? I have fallen into this trap only to realize that I have and tried to snap back out but it is hard. It is hard to not walk around and thing that every one who looks at you is judging you by the way you look, dress, how skinny you are, your hair color…it’s so sad. Just another cruel reality that is making me ‘ruined for life’. There are so many questions like these that I wish I knew that answers too.

This weekend I have my 1-1 with Shane. He is one of our support people and A Jesuit Scholastic at Loyola. We are going to go to the Art Institute downtown. It should be fun!
Last weekend we were in Milwaukee, they hosted a ‘Pirate/Ninja Luau’ at their house so the Detroit and Pontiac communities came down from Michigan and Stacey and I went up there, it was a good time. Things get a bit out of control at these party’s. That has been something that I know I cannot change, I don’t take part but I accept. I think that JVC as a whole needs to do something about the amount of alcohol that is expected, yes, there is an expectation that if you are hosting a party/get together that alcohol will be there. I personally think that there should be a no-alcohol policy all together but it is what it is. There are a lot of things that I disagree with about JVC as a whole. They were hard to get over at first but there is a point where I just learned to accept the things I can’t change. Isn’t there a quote about that? Anyhoo, it’s a lot easier to just take one day as it comes!

I just finished reading a really good book, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Liz Gilbert. It is about Liz’s journey to find balance in her life. She travels to Italy, India and Indonesia to do just that. I recommend reading it. I have read so many books so far this year. I am pretty sure I have read just about every one that was given to me before I left and all the ones I brought with me. It is great! I love having the time to read for leisure. Please, if you have any recommendations, I would love to know. I want to read books that are meaningful to others.
This week I purchased tickets to a Cubs/Padres game at Wrigley field. This is huge! I am so so excited! I am a huge Padres fan and I cannot wait! It is going to be so much fun and the tix were not too expensive which makes it so much better. My community is going too; it should be a great time!
I hope that all that are going/have been to congress have/had an amazing time. I wish I could be there. I will be praying for you all and keeping you in my thoughts. GO MAR! I will be there in spirit! You are all amazing. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Know that mine are with you too. Much love, joy, peace and blessings to everyone!xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

ps it's getting warmer, a balmy 45 degrees today! woohoo, I don't have to wear a hat! :)